Tea partier weighs McConnell race

Louisville businessman Matthew Bevin is interested in taking on the Senate minority leader in a GOP primary next year, according to the city’s NPR affiliate. A Bevin spokeswoman told the station he had met with tea party groups and others who had “frustration with their current representation.”

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“These meetings, together with the recent reaction to the possibility of a primary race, have served to reaffirm the general sense of political disenchantment among many voters in Kentucky that has been widely reflected in recent articles and polls,” Bevin spokeswoman Amy Lowe said in a statement. “As a married father of nine, active businessman and long time resident, Matt, like many Kentuckians, wants to ensure that his children’s futures are as bright as his were as a boy. To that end, he has always been open to listening to a wide range of ideas for charting a better path forward. That is what he is doing at this time.”

Perhaps previewing his line of attack in an eventual primary, Lowe also said that “decades of fiscal mismanagement in Washington DC have undermined the potential for such a future.”

But some tea party activists in the Bluegrass State said they weren’t familiar with Bevin.

“I’ve never heard of this new guy but what would I know about the Kentucky Tea Party, right?” Christopher Hightower, a former volunteer for Sen. Rand Paul and state legislative candidate, wrote on Facebook, according to WHAS, Louisville’s ABC affiliate. “Of course the media will anoint anyone as a Tea Party candidate, as long as they take on Sen. McConnell.”

Others expressed concern over Bevin using state assistance to rebuild his family’s bell factory in East Hampton, Connecticut. The Bevin Brothers factory, which was apparently uninsured, was destroyed by a fire in May 2012.

“Would this business owner taking taxpayer money to rebuild his business after a fire be considered to support limited government, free-markets, fiscal responsibility? What happen to his business insurance coverage?” the United Kentucky Tea Party’s John Kemper said.

Since Paul upset McConnell’s pick in a 2010 GOP primary, the Senate’s leading Republican has courted his state’s tea party activists, bringing Paul’s campaign manager on board. But Democrats are telling tea party groups they’re ready to back a McConnell challenger with money and resources, hoping to break whatever bond exists.